Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is and always will be Hideo Kojima’s magnum opus for the Metal Gear franchise, though that does come with a catch in terms of its replay value.
The final game made by the auteur game creator before his split with publisher Konami, Metal Gear Solid V is a title that had almost anything and everything Kojima could think of crammed into it.
Set in several open-world settings, the game allows players to approach a deluge of main and side missions in whatever ways they want, going in guns blazing or methodically sneaking through compounds without ever being spotted.
That’s to say nothing of the game’s main attraction: The story, which, while sparse and well-spaced out among the game’s missions, fills in important gaps in the Metal Gear storyline and introduces vexing new questions to be answered in later entries.
This wealth of content, however, is also the game’s greatest weakness.
With so much packed into the game, Metal Gear Solid V can feel bloated and padded out, especially for those trying to glean all of the story elements they can out of it.
Which is no easy task either; to get the story’s true ending, players will have to sink as many as 90 hours into the title, playing through and replaying missions to get the necessary resources to complete their base and unlock the story’s final missions.
It’s difficult enough during one’s initial playthrough, so players wouldn’t be blamed for declining to ever go through the whole process again.
